Double game (Homeland)

Carrie ( Claire Danes ), Saul ( Mandy Patinkin ), Quinn ( Rupert Friend ) and Estes ( David Harwood ) decide what to do now when there is no news from Brody ( Damien Lewis ) for 12 hours. They decide to detain Roy Hammad ( Zuleika Robinson ), but their plans change when Carrie receives a call from Brody. Brody desperately asks Carrie to send the family to a safe place immediately. Carrie decides to send Mike ( Diego Clattenhoff ) to pick up the Brody family so as not to arouse suspicion. Mike brings Jessica ( Morena Baccarin ), Dana (Morgan Sailor) and Chris (Jackson Pace) to the CIA's shelter and stays with them.

After examining Quinn's apartment, Virgil ( David Marciano ) and Max ( Max Sterling ) report to Sol about their findings. They found traps from penetrating all over the apartment, and that he was ready to leave at any moment. They also found a rifle cleaning kit and a photograph of a woman with a baby. Sol tracks down the woman, a police officer in Philadelphia ( Danielle Pineda ), and speaks with her, posing as a tax officer . Sol confirms that she is Quinn's alienated mother.

At the CIA's interrogation, Brody reports that he was taken to Abu Nazir ( Navid Negaban ), who is now in the United States. He continues to claim that Nazir made a veiled threat to the Brody family, and that Nazir is planning an attack on an event to return to his homeland, where Vice President Walden ( Jamie Sheridan ) will lead, where 300 soldiers of the special squad will have to reunite with their families. Brody's job is to convince Walden to let one journalist, Roya Hammad, cover the event.

Dana, even more disappointed with her father and the difficulties he brought to his family. She tells Mike that she sometimes wants her father to never return from the war. Mike tries to explain to her that everyone who was in the war comes back with a “wound”, including himself.

Quinn meets a man in an empty bus. Max, who followed Quinn, takes a few shots of the meeting. When Sol sees the photographs, he identifies Quinn's liaison as Dara Adal ( F. Murray Abraham ), the man whom Sol knew 18 years ago, who led the secret operations in Nairobi . Virgil notes that if Quinn brings information to Dar Adal, then his functional responsibilities are far from the "analyst" that he should be.

Late in the evening at the shelter, Jessica sneaks into Mike's room and has sex with him. The next day, Brody calls his family to check them out, talking to Chris and Jessica, but Dana refuses to talk to him.

On the day they returned home, the CIA tracked down Roy Hammad and her team of reporters in a restaurant. Returning to headquarters, Quinn leaves according to a message from Estes. Sol asks Estes where Quinn is going. Estes explains that Quinn will “liaise with the FBI,” and Sol asks why the assignment has been assigned to the analyst. While Roya and her team of reporters are eating in a restaurant, an SUV drives up to Roya's van. Four people of Abu Nazir crawl out of the van, including an “armed man” ( MM ) who was attacking a tailor's shop in Gettysburg (played by Mido Hamada ), while one remains inside, hidden by tinted windows. They pull some camera batteries out of the news van and replace them with a look-like, but much heavier. When Carrie notices this, they give the order to advance, and the terrorists are successfully captured.

While this is happening, Quinn drives a limousine to Brody's house to take him to the place of return to his homeland. While he waits, Quinn pulls a silenced pistol out of the glove compartment and prepares to kill Brody. But when Carrie confirms that the man in the SUV was not Abu Nazir, Estes orders Quinn to “set aside” and that “he is still needed.”

The script for the episode was written by executive producer Alexander Carey , and Dan Attias became the director.

Ratings

During the original screening, the episode was watched by 2.02 million viewers, an increase over the previous episode. ^[one]

Critical Reaction

The Huffington Post's Michael Hogan praised the episode highly, saying: “In Double Play, perhaps the best episode to date, the scriptwriters have put the intrigue to the top of the plot.” ^[2]

On the contrary, Willa Paskin from Salon described it as “the most boring episode of the season, with the plot and characters deceived one by one, but leaving us, so far, only with a false attack.” ^[3]

• Double Game on Showtime
• " Double Game ” on the Internet Movie Database
• Double Play on TV.com